Do away with student surveys of teachers

I refer to the letter “Let teachers be stricter about discipline in schools” (Sept 19, online) and share my disappointment at the state of things. When I was a student, teachers were the bosses, but now students are the bosses.

Surveys are conducted during or at the end of term to determine the quality of services provided by teachers. Students can misuse such surveys to take revenge on teachers they dislike. Also, students who fail examinations could grade teachers lowly.

Education administrators may use such surveys to help determine whether teachers have achieved their key performance indicators. This would have an effect on management’s impression of them, thus affecting promotions, bonuses and pay rises.

Teachers would have to get in students’ good books and manage them carefully in order to please management and avoid unpleasantness, but at the expense of students’ learning.

While such a survey can be helpful for customer service in the retail and food and beverage industries, it has been applied wrongly to education. Students should not grade teachers.